Regaining their independence through their food. A farmer harvests wheat in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, on May 8, 2022 (Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90)
“The perfect end will be death” – that’s what Arundhati Roy called her famous essay, which describes the tragedy of India’s dams. Dams that were built at the time with the help of the World Bank and accompanied by politicians and government officials.
Roy claimed that although thousands of dams have been built in India – over 4,000 – a fifth of the country’s population (about 200 million people) still lacks potable water, and two-thirds (660 million people) do not have basic sanitation facilities.
What is there? During the 50 years in which the dams were built, approximately 33 million people were displaced from their lands and became landless and propertyless. These people are not recorded anywhere. Lands left desolate led to floods, inundations, high soil salinity and the destruction of agriculture and tradition. These dams also led to debts – which India paid with compound interest – and to the transfer of additional wealth from the poor to the rich through water, which is an effective means of population control. Not very democratic.
On the face of it, what about us and India? Unfortunately, far too many. A similar story, of progress and abundance, that only a few get to enjoy their fruits while many others sink, can also be found in Israel’s food system and other western food systems.
On the face of it, we have a rich food system, in which nothing is missing. More than that, 2.5 million tons of food is destroyed every year. So how does it happen that about a fifth of the population suffers from food insecurity, and 10% of them suffer from such severe food insecurity that they do not know when their next meal will be.
How does that happen? Perhaps because the progress in food production does not lead to a decrease in the rate of hunger, not only in Israel, but on a global level. Perhaps because the food market in Israel is controlled by a single-digit number of corporations, as you can see in every visit to the supermarket. Maybe because about 90% of our wheat is imported, and similar orders of magnitude of other grains too. And the emergency reserves, as published in TheMarker, have not been increased in 50 years.
Our agricultural lands suffer from erosion, which can lead to total destruction – they are carried away at a rate 100 times faster than the rate at which they are created. And if that’s not enough, then the nutritional value of our food is also decreasing – the fruits and vegetables we eat contain much less nutrients than before.
At the end of the day, we pay too much money for food products that contain too many food colorings, preservatives, emulsifiers, flavors, sweeteners, sprays and engineered particles.
And in such a centralized, unstable and non-sovereign system, any change in circumstances – even the most random – could lead to the collapse of this whole house of cards.
In preparation for the holidays, we are once again flooded with requests to donate food products and campaigns to distribute food packages, on behalf of organizations and associations for people living in poverty, who fill the place of the state. Alongside this important work, these organizations also know that this is not a solution: therefore, in the upcoming elections, the front of food organizations calls on the government to budget for the issue of food insecurity by adding NIS 350 million to the state budget.
You might be interested
This could be a first step towards realizing the right to accessible, healthy and nutritious food for all. But there are many more things that can be done.
Our food system needs restructuring, rethinking in all possible aspects. We don’t have to wait for a terrible tragedy to produce food sovereignty here – an egalitarian and democratic food system based on economic access to food for everyone, which is based on healthy and sustainable food for future generations as well.
Such a system will be based on agriculture that benefits the land; on encouraging local sales of products manufactured in Israel; on encouraging the cultivation of vegetables in and near the cities; on the establishment of fruit orchards on the sides of the road; on encouraging food rescue to close the gap of food insecurity; For significant support for farmers, who collapse under the burden and leave the industry, and for guidance and knowledge so that they can grow for all of us – in a more sustainable way.
It’s really not a dream. If we look to the side, to our Palestinian brothers in Gaza and the territories, we will find that there people grow food on roofs and establish small businesses in the field of agriculture. True, they do it out of choice, but they make history, and regain their independence through their food.
It is possible. But this requires the establishment of a state system that will consolidate the task of leading to nutritional independence, as in the city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil, which succeeded in almost completely eradicating hunger there, from 20% of the population to 2%; Like Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union, which increased, through organic farming, its vegetable output by 145% and reduced the use of chemicals by about 70%.
If we do that, the perfect end need not be death. It can also be life: life in the land, life in markets bustling with people, life of a variety of varieties and species, life of food baskets full of abundance and joy. The perfect end would be life.
And one more little thing…
We are really glad you read this post, and hope you found it interesting. The team of Local Conversation invests significant efforts to bring our readers news, investigations, interpretations and diverse opinion columns, all out of a commitment to resisting the occupation and promoting peace, equality and social justice.
It is hard to find things like this post in other media outlets in Israel, and the reason it is here is that our local press is independent and free. We do not depend on any capitalists, nor advertisers nor paywalls.
And yet, the great amount of work that goes into each such post – from paying the writers, through the work of the editors and photographers, to the payment for legal advice or the servers on which the site sits – costs money. The best way to ensure our stability and independence is the support of the community of readers through membership in a local conversation. And in this you have an important place.
It’s time to be a member of a local conversation
For support – click here